Cultural Criticism and the Challenges of Women's Identity Conflict in Confrontation with Gender Clichés Case Study: Ghada Al-Saman's Short Story

Gender stereotypes arising from the culture of patriarchal societies introduce common and limiting beliefs about how individuals act in the family and society and the classification of society into masculine and feminine. The present article tries to show how Al-Saman has been able to draw suffering by examining the short story of "Jannat al-Bajja" by Ghada Al-Saman based on the most important principles of cultural criticism in the field of gender and challenging the dominant patriarchal discourse using descriptive-analytical method. Women in the family as an obedient and passive identity in a people-oriented environment, show the transformation of these women and the recovery of their independent identity in an equal environment in the context of their story. The most important area criticized by Al-Saman is the popular culture of Arab societies, which has failed to adapt to the principles of the contemporary modernist movement. Explaining that Al-Saman also depicts the pathology of gender stereotypes in men and also shows the extent of cultural error about men as the upper class of patriarchal society. Criticism of gender inequalities, the harms of the patriarchal system, women's self-destruction in an unequal gender environment, the conflict between the principles of tradition and modernity, and the reduction of women to sexual identity are some of the most important issues that Al-Saman highlights in his stories.